My daughter choses Charisma for Valeros for the first two skill feats. Valeros is now very good at picking up, "How you doing?"
For Lini I would do the same because you really don't want to miss out on those few animal allies when they come up. It would be nice to be able to play a few more animals whilst keeping one ([ ] or two) in your hand.
As the game will continue to get more difficult with further adventures, I would generally recommend spending skill feats on the things you're good at: your favorite fighting stat usually, and maybe one other thing. Going from "bad" to "unspeakably bad" at some sort of roll doesn't make much of an impact on a character, but going from "good" to "decent" at combat (or casting, or getting allies) makes a much bigger difference.
I can see there being fights Valeros could still lose, or more importantly, fights he's unlikely to win if his tiny hand gets destroyed by non-combat damage before making the check(s). So I'd say str for Val, wis for Lini.
Animal allies aren't acquired with charisma. They're wisdom/survival. And boosting wisdom happens to help Lini with recharging her spells, and bonuses when casting offensive divine spells (Inflict, Holy Light). So I'd definitely go for wisdom with Lini.
Ah, I had not remembered that animals use Wisdom.